The truth
by tvfan69
Summary: Set in the tmnt2k12 before 'Wormquake' and before 'for better or worse' on Castle. When the NYPD comes across a young girl who was killed seemingly over a 16 year old news story they discover that their theory is only part of the puzzle to solving her murder. Meanwhile the turtles are trying to figure out how she is connected to them or more specifically, their Sensei.
1. Chapter 1

It was as early a morning as any in New York, the city that never sleeps. However on this particular morning the NYPD had discovered the latest citizen of the sleepless city to join the residents who were trapped in an eternal sleep.

As Castle and Beckett walked down the wooden planks of the docks Beckett couldn't help but crinkle her noise as they drew closer and closer to the crime scene, the salty morning air of the water mixed with the undeniable stench of death was enough make someone with a weak stomach gag.

"What have we got?" She asked as she and Castle finally reached the scene. It wasn't crowded, just themselves, Esposito, Ryan, Lanie and two other cops who were roping off the area.

"Name's Jasmine Suzuki, she's nineteen and a college student. Can't tell much about her, all she had in her wallet was her I.D., some cash and a credit card. She also had a track phone" Esposito listed off as Castle approached the body.

"Can we talk about what happened to her?" He asked bending over the dead girl's body.

It was clear how she died, her entire stomach was shredded to bits and all of her organs were ripped everywhere. It made even Lanie question what the killer used to do this job.

"Looks like something sharp and with more than one tip entered into her left hip then was slashed all the way through until it came out the other end" the medical examiner said as the other's joined in looking over the body.

"So what the killer had one knife in each hand?" Castle asked half joking and half serious

"Not a half bad idea except to do this amount of damage he would've needed to slash through her a few times but it looks like the weapon was only entered once. However I did find this" Lanie said holding up a clear plastic bag which contained a small gray sliver of something

"I'm going to have to send it to the lab but it looks like a piece of an animal claw" she explained

"You think an animal did this to her?" Beckett asked wondering what kind of animal could have possibly done this kind of damage. Sure any animal could have attacked her and chewed her remains but messy as it was this was precise.

Aside from her middle and her obvious death, she was unharmed. An animal would've chewed her leg or her arm, left scratches somewhere else on her, torn her clothes, just something. An animal would've done something more, something messier; something less precise.

* * *

Back at the precinct after going through Jasmine's phone Esposito got hold of a girl named Ginger Brooks, Jasmine's roommate.

"Oh god I knew it, I knew something was wrong" Ginger cried as she sat on the couch of the almost lounge like room with Castle and Beckett opposite her, asking her what she knew.

"What do you mean you knew? Did you know that Jasmine was in trouble?" Castle questioned the young girl but she only shook her head.

"No, no I didn't know she was in trouble. Not this kind of trouble" she explained before taking a breath, trying to calm herself.

"But she'd been acting strange lately, for the past week" Ginger began

"Strange like how?" Beckett asked eager to hear this and relieved that for once someone who had a relationship with the victim had noticed strange behavior, it would surprise you how so few people noticed.

"Jasmine would always go to bed before midnight, always. If she stayed up later then she was watching a movie or finishing homework but the past two nights she stayed up reading this same file over and over again." Ginger explained

"And what was in this file?" Castle asked getting more and more intrigued by the explanation as it went on.

"I don't know. She refused to tell me. She said it was nothing personal just that she told her mom once and she laughed in her face and told her that what she believed was impossible, desperate hope." Ginger explained so Castle nodded disappointed that the girl didn't know the contents of the file as Beckett continued to listen intently.

Ginger reached into her bag and pulled out a folder with the image of Hello Kitty on it, she held it out to Beckett.

"Whatever it is I knew where she kept it so I brought it with me, I thought it might help" she explained, Beckett took it with an almost whispered thank you.

"You didn't look at it?" Castle asked surprised, he would've.

"Jasmine said she would tell me about it when she solved it, she didn't want me to know before then. But I can tell you one thing" Ginger said so the Castle and Beckett both paid close attention.

"She brought it with her when she came to school freshman year" she said, whatever was in that file her roommate had been investigating it for a few years and now it had gotten her killed.

"Thank you for all your help Ginger just two more questions, can you tell us what Jasmine was a major in and how to contact her parents?" Beckett asked as Ginger once again took a breath.

"She was a criminal justice major, as for her parents her dad died in the military. She hasn't spoken to her mom in almost two years, they didn't get along. I'm sorry but I don't know where she is" Ginger explained wishing she could've been more helpful.

* * *

"Hey Beckett" Ryan called when he caught Beckett returning to her desk

"So I got in touch the dispatcher who got the call about Jasmine last night, said it came in around twelve-thirty a.m. but here's the weird part, it came from an unlisted number" he explained

"Wait so somebody killed her and then called 911 for her?" Castle asked; it didn't make any sense but who else would call from an unlisted number?

* * *

Meanwhile down beneath the surface of New York two turtle brother's sat on the couch of their living room while the youngest sat crisscross on the floor and the oldest paced around the sunken pit holding a pocket knife which regrettably they had taken off of a deceased woman's body.

"I still say we should've left the knife there, we called the police and what if they need it to find whatever sicko did that?" The red bandana wearing turtle growled only for his younger yet taller brother to sigh

"Ordinarily I'd agree with you Raph but we can't ignore what's carved on it" Donnie reminded his brother who still didn't seem happy about it but nodded. He wasn't usually one to want to leave things up to the police but seeing that most likely innocent girl who couldn't have been much older than himself lying there in a pool of her own blood and guts; it had been enough to make his stomach churn. And without her knife what was to stop the police from ruling it as some kind of accident.

"Donnie's right, whoever that girl was she had the symbol of the Hamato clan carved onto her weapon. That means that somehow in some way she's connected to us" Leo reminded them

"And we could be next" Mikey said fearfully. When he had seen what happened to that girl he looked away, he had wanted to throw up and he felt lightheaded, how could a person do that?

He couldn't understand it. He couldn't for the life of him understand how someone could be so inhuman as to rip another human being to shreds and leave them where they fell. Even the Shredder had the decency to get rid of the body. Even if it was in the name of destroying evidence, still even a monster like him wouldn't gruesomely murder a young girl only to leave her lying in the spot where she took her last breath for all to see.

Then Donnie had seen the pocket knife which had fallen to her side and engraved in the wooden handle with black ink to make the engraving stand out was a symbol matching the one on their own throwing stars, the symbol of the Hamato clan.


	2. Chapter 2

Castle was more than eager to go through the mysterious file but was almost disappointed when he found not only that all that was inside was a newspaper article but also that it was written in Japanese. Now a small part of him was excited by this of course because he figured that if Jasmine didn't show this file to her roommate then it had to be big but if it was all written in a language which very few people in New York read then it had to be huge.

"So I went through Jasmine's school records apparently she's originally from Nagoya Japan but we still can't track down her mom" Esposito informed Castle and Beckett who were currently sitting at Beckett's desk trying to find something on the file written in English, with no luck.

"Well if she's from Japan that would explain why this is in Japanese" Beckett said closing the file and handing it to Esposito

"Ask Tori if she can translate this also there's a symbol drawn on the inside cover see if maybe it means anything" she said and Esposito nodded before leaving to do his work.

"Why would Jasmine come all the way from Japan to study criminal justice?" Castle questioned, sort of amused by the sight of his fiancée sitting there deep in concentration, holding a pen to her mouth but not yet chewing on it.

"I don't know but if she brought that folder with her then something tells me she came here looking for something" Beckett responded.

* * *

Splinter gently brushed his thumb over the symbol on the pocket knife his sons had brought to him.

How could this happen? How was this even possible? He and his children were all that was left of the Hamato clan, or so he had thought.

"I do not know who this young woman you describe could have been, but one thing is clear. Although we did not know her she was a part of our family" Splinter said so the boys lowered their heads.

The dojo became silent. Kneeling on the floor all five of them mourned the deceased girl, they did not know her name but they knew that she deserved their respect. She had never once seen them and may not have even known that they existed but they were all members of the same clan, they were family.

When the moment had passed Mikey was the first to break the silence

"Could we have trusted her?" He asked, it was an odd question but it was one which had been pestering him ever since they discovered the symbol.

They knew better than to trust humans, April, her father, Casey, Kurtzman and Murakami were the only ones. But this girl had been a member of their own clan, a family whom they did not know. What if there were others like her, could they be trusted? Or were they supposed to hide from the rest of the Hamato clan, the humans of their family?

* * *

It was getting later into the day when Ryan approached Beckett's desk with the file.

"So Tori translated the newspaper article into English, turns out its sixteen years old and it's about a fire that broke out in a home in a town called Chiba. Apparently two people died in the fire, a woman named Tang Shen and her five month old daughter Miwa, Shen's husband was the only one to survive" He explained

"Wait Jasmine was nineteen she would've been three years old when that happened. Why does she care so much about it?" Castle questioned although the minute he said it he regretted it, there could be a million reasons as to why Jasmine cared.

"Maybe she knew the family, any word on her mom?" Beckett asked but Ryan only shook his head

"No not yet but we did manage to find out her name, Aika Suzuki. Other than that we've got nothing the woman's a ghost" he said just as Esposito joined them

"And she's not the only one" the former Special Forces cop said getting the attention of the others.

"I tried getting Jasmine's school records from back in Japan but she doesn't have any" he said

"What do you mean she doesn't have any?" Beckett asked standing up

"Well I asked the college for the letter of recommendation she sent in with her application along with her transcripts, transcripts were bogus except for senior year and I couldn't find any records before high school. It's like the girl didn't even exist until about two and a half years ago" he continued to explain.

"So a woman and her daughter live off the grid in Japan their entire lives and then all of a sudden the daughter shows up dead in New York?" Castle questioned, the other's looking at him just knowing he had some insane theory forming in his mind.

"Well isn't it obvious?" He asked but didn't bother waiting for an answer

"Jasmine comes from a family of spies, sixteen years ago when the fire happened something must have been stolen, something precious. Now the man who started the fire has appeared in New York and Jasmine came to take back what he stole" Castle theorized but the three cops around him each gave him a look he hardly ever received for his theories, a look of consideration.

"That's actually a reasonable theory Castle" Beckett finally said

"It is?" He asked just as shocked as anyone to hear that

"Well the spy stuff is a little out there but Jasmine must have somehow known the victims of that fire and if she didn't then her family did. She lived off the grid before coming to New York; something must have made her come out of hiding" Beckett began before turning to Ryan

"Ryan what did the article say was the cause of that fire?" She asked

"A lit candle had been sliced in half so they thought it was intentional" he answered

"So maybe Jasmine did come to New York to go after the person who started it" Esposito mused not wanting to admit that Castle was probably more right than wrong.

"Didn't you say Shen's husband survived the fire?" Castle asked Ryan

"Yes but according to the article he told the police that a man named Oroku Saki started it" Ryan explained

"Ok but if he was caught then why would Jasmine hunt him down?" Castle asked

"Maybe he got out" Esposito theorized

"Or they never got him" Beckett suggested quietly but loud enough to hear.

"Ok you two look into Shen's husband and Oroku Saki if Saki did do it I want to know why and if he didn't then I want to know why he was blamed. Castle and I will talk to Jasmine's professors and friends, maybe some of them can shed some light on where she came from" Beckett instructed so the two guys left and Beckett sat back down at her desk to make some calls to the school.

"Don't I get a thank you?" Castle asked with a grin on his face, proud that he may have actually been right for once.


	3. Chapter 3

Splinter spent that night thinking long and hard about the knife and how the boys said they had found it next to a dead woman's body. But try as he might apart from his own father Splinter could not recall any survivors of the battle which destroyed most of both the Hamato Foot Clans apart from his own father and an infant Oroku Saki. But he had been an infant himself at the time and the answer to who this survivor was, who the poor girl could be descended from, was an answer he could not remember.

* * *

"My god is she really dead?" A professor asked that next morning when Castle and Beckett went to the college to talk to people about Jasmine.

"When she didn't show up for class this morning I just thought she was sick or had overslept" the man continued trying to process that the girl was truly gone.

"Professor Ingrid we understand that you also had Jasmine in a class last year as well as this year?" Beckett questioned the older man who nodded

"Yes but I often have students for more than one course" he explained to the detective who nodded

"Well after looking into her records it seems that everything in her transcripts apart from her senior year was faked" Beckett said to him and his face seemed to fall.

"Faked?" The elderly man asked in shock, it wasn't the first time he had heard of some desperate soul trying to fake a good transcript and it wasn't even the first time he had heard of someone getting away with it.

But Jasmine Suzuki?

She wouldn't do that, she couldn't have needed to.

"You sound surprised" Castle inquired as the man nodded

"Jasmine was a wonderful student. She studied hard and got good grades, she was dedicated to what she was doing. She was one of those students who you looked at her and you could tell that she wouldn't stop until she got to where she wanted to be" he said, he still couldn't believe it.

"And where exactly did she want to be?" Castle questioned

"She said that she wanted to become a private investigator" professor Ingrid answered as Beckett and Castle exchanged glances, each thinking that it was only more evidence that Jasmine was after whoever started that fire.

"Professor did Jasmine ever mention anything about a fire in your class?" Beckett asked him but Ingrid only shook his head and before he could ask what Jasmine's murder had to do with a fire Beckett's cell phone rang.

* * *

Saying that the mysterious dead Hamato clan member was having an effect on the turtles was an understatement. The lair was filled with maybe the most awkward sense of feelings it ever had been. While it should have been filled with sorrow and mourning the family did not know what they had to mourn, they knew nothing of the dead girl. They did not train that day, in the Hamato clan at least it had always been seen as disrespectful to train the day after losing the lives of some of their own, be it one or many. When April and Casey heard what had happened April promised to keep a look out around the city for any mention of the girl, for her funeral or just for any clue as to who she might have been. She was sure that she'd find something after all the news of the college student having been viciously ripped apart until she died although unbelievably sad was sure to make the news. Casey agreed and promise to do the same but Leo warned them to be careful, based on how the girl died he couldn't help but think that Shredder had something to do with this.

"Did you find anything?" Beckett asked and she and Castle entered the morgue and fallowed Lanie over to Jasmine's pale body.

"Nothing you would expect. No bullet wounds, no drug evidence, no bizarre stomach contents however what I did find was a lot stranger" Lanie said lifting Jasmine's right arm to show her wrist was streaked with now faded red skin.

"I found these marks on both her wrists as if somebody was squeezing them, most likely they were holding her still for somebody else" Lanie began

"So our killer had a partner?" Castle asked

"Yes but I thought I saw something shining in the light on her wrist so I looked at it and found a scale on her skin" Lanie began but suddenly she looked shaken and confused, neither of which were things she looked very often.

"I had it tested and it came back as fifty percent fish and fifty percent human" she confessed looking as if she may have seen a ghost.

"I'm sorry what?" Beckett asked trying to comprehend what she had just been told, how was that even possible?

"That's not all" Lanie admitted showing them the gray sliver which had been found in Jasmine's wounds

"It came back as a piece of a claw that is fifty percent human and fifty percent dog DNA" the medical examiner explained as she and Beckett both looked to Castle for some sort of story to make this make sense

"Science experiment gone wrong?" he suggested with a shrug but he knew that he would defiantly have a more detailed theory later.

Beckett turned back to the lifeless body "What the hell was this girl mixed up in?" She finally asked

* * *

Castle and Beckett returned to the precinct after their strange meeting with Lanie, and calling it strange was to say the least.

"So Jasmine was clawed to death by a mutant dog-man while a mutant fish-man held her still?" Castle questioned not even trying to be funny about it; it really was starting to sound like that's what happened.

"No Castle I'm sure there is a perfectly logical explanation for this" Beckett said as they neared her desk

"Really? Because I'd like to hear it" Castle said as Beckett took a sip of the coffee on her desk and that was when Ryan and Esposito came over, each holding a manila folder in their hands.

"Ok so I did some research on Shen's husband" Esposito began as he took the photo of a dark haired, heavily muscled man out of the folder he held and tacked it to the murder board.

"His name's Hamato Yoshi. He was in the army when he was in his twenties and not long after he came home him and Shen got married and had Miwa now the interesting thing is the day after the fire he disappeared" Esposito explained

"What do you mean by disappeared?" Castle questioned

"I mean he vanished, he gave his statement to the police a few hours after the fire and nobody saw him after that" Esposito explained and Beckett nodded

"Ok so his house burns down, his wife and daughter both die and then he just disappears. Sounds like the actions of a guilty man but why would he set the fire in the first place?" Beckett wondered out loud only for Ryan to speak up.

"I'm not so sure he did" he said causing his three comrades to turn their attention over to him.

"I did some digging on Oroku Saki and turns out that not only was he in the military with Yoshi but apparently Yoshi's father raised him" Ryan started

"Wait so Yoshi and Saki are adopted brothers?" Beckett asked

"Well the adoption system in at least that part of Japan was kind of wreck back then so it was more like Yoshi's parents were his guardians but weren't legally obliged to be so. Anyways I called over there for the case files on the fire and according to many of the locals Saki was also in love with Shen" Ryan explained before opening up his folder.

"And this is his picture" he finished before placing on the murder board the picture of a man with scars running all across his face.

"There's no way that guy wasn't in the house that night" Esposito claimed after the three had seen and taken in the picture.

"That's what I thought unfortunately the house was in a pretty secluded area with no neighbors around for miles. With no witnesses and no proof of how he got those scars Saki was set free. He moved to Tokyo a few months after the trial but he moved to New York about a year and a half ago" Ryan concluded

"That's around the same time Jasmine moved here" Castle said stating the obvious

"Ok Ryan call Saki and get him in here for questioning, maybe he can tell us why a nineteen year old girl might have followed him here" Beckett ordered.

* * *

Raph went out alone that night. They had decided not to go out tonight as part of the no training thing but he just needed to run. He was so mad about all this. So mad that someone they had never met but yet was one of their own was dead and he hadn't been able to do anything to stop it. He knew it wasn't his or any of their faults and if he heard one of the others blaming themselves he wouldn't hesitate to remind them that nothing in their power could have possibly stopped it if they didn't even know about her. But still he needed to get his frustrations out and the punching bag just wasn't cutting it tonight. He ran across the rooftops of the city unaware that he wasn't the only one running out frustrations tonight.

* * *

On the streets below Karai ran down the sidewalks of the city streets as if she were in a hurry to get somewhere when in reality it was the opposite, she was in a hurry to get away from somewhere. She had answered that phone call, the one which came from the homicide detective asking for her father. So she handed over the phone and once he hung up her father said he had to go down to the police station despite the late hour and answer a few questions, he said it was about something police had seen going down outside of the church.

But Karai isn't stupid

She was always there all day and would've heard something going on, there was never any sign of any kind of physical fight when she returned from missions and she was a light sleeper and would've heard something going on late at night. So once Shredder was gone she threw on a pair of sneakers and went for a run only wishing that she wouldn't inevitably find herself back at the church when she was through.

_Has it really come to this? Am I seriously pretending I can run away from my problems?  
_She wondered as her speeding heart rate seemed to quicken and her breathing became just a bit heavier as she realized she had already run three blocks but she just kept running.

She loves her father, she truly does. After all he is her father but at the same time he's all she has and this isn't first time in her life that he's left the house and she wondered what shady business he had gotten involved with this time and if the next time she saw him would be with him behind bars.

* * *

"Thank you for coming in Mr. Oroku and I'm sorry it has to be so late" detective Beckett apologized as she and Castle sat down at the interrogation table across from the scared man.

"Not a problem" the Shredder assured the two people about to question him. He needed to come off as nice and understanding as he possibly could. He could not let them know the truth behind that snooping girl's death, there was too much at stake.

"Mr. Oroku are you familiar with a girl named Jasmine Suzuki?" Beckett asked putting Jasmine's picture on the table

"I can't say that I am" Shredder responded glancing at the photo in front of him. It might have surprised most people to discover that he was telling the truth, he didn't know her.

"She was found dead and her roommate said that she had been reading this news story recently" Beckett explained as she put the newspaper article down on the table, Shredder picked it up and studied it.

"Detective I assure you I had nothing to do with this fire" he said and maybe the reason that Beckett could not pick up on his lies was because not even he was aware that he was lying, after all in his eyes it was Splinter's fault.

"Then how did you get those scars?" Castle asked prompting the frightening man which they were questioning to glare at him

"It was an accident in the army" that even Shredder knew was a lie.

"Mr. Oroku regardless of whether or not you were involved in the fire you were a suspect and Jasmine moved to New York from Japan only a few weeks after you did, can you think of anyway she could have been tied to the Hamato family?" Beckett asked.

Shredder's blood boiled at the mention of the Hamato family. But he had to keep his cool and give them an answer which would send them far off of his trail and he had the perfect one.

"I have a cousin around the same age as myself, Oroku Aika but I only learned of her existence once I discovered what had happened to my family. I suppose it's possible that she at some point had a daughter. Hamato Yoshi was the cause of that fire but he tried to blame me. I fear Jasmine may of come here looking for me to protect her from him" he said trying to find a balance between this and the lie he had told Karai, if he was lucky they wouldn't question her.

"Thank you Mr. Oroku you can go now" Beckett said standing up. They were done with him, for now.


	4. Chapter 4

Karai was still running although by now she was thinking about heading back to the church. But for the moment she was running and then before she even knew what happened she was tackled to the ground of an alley and heard a voice

"What did you do to her?!" A furious voice demanded as Karai opened her eyes trying to see what was on top of her.

As a skilled ninja it was very hard for anyone to take her by surprise and so this feeling, this feeling of total confusion was new to her. But it started to make a little more sense when she saw that it was Raphael who was sitting on her.

"You're getting better" she teased with a smirk, this is just what she needs. A fight with one of the turtles would no doubt take her mind off of whatever it is her father got himself into this time and at the very least would delay her in getting home.

"I'm not in the mood for games Karai! Answer me!" Raph demanded. He wanted answers. He wanted to know who the girl was, what happened to her, how involved in it Shredder was, he wanted to know.

Karai struggled underneath his weight but it was no use. He sat stubbornly on her thighs and try as she did to bend her knees and kick him off his ankles locked her shins in place which could not have been comfortable for him but it kept her restrained. What truly frightened her though was the grip he had on her arms. Each hand of his held an arm down against the dirty gravel of the alley which had not been paved over in who knows how many years. But his three fingers pressed her down so hard that Karai could actually feel it as he prevented her blood from flowing.

"What… What are you… talking about?" She asked through her grunting and struggling as she tried so desperately to get even the tiniest centimeter of leeway.

She was scared; there was a raging fire in Raphael's eyes and nothing but absolute hatred in his voice. All in one motion and still holding her by just her biceps Raph stood and swung her up and into a wall. Despite the fact that he is considerably shorter than she is he held Karai pinned tightly against the wall and more than just a few inches off the ground.

"The girl Shredder murdered!" He clarified for her but upon hearing that Karai had had enough. She kicked Raph hard in the chest, sending him flying back as she landed on the ground. She took out her sword as she walked across the alley while her opponent picked himself up.

"My father didn't KILL anyone!" She spat angrily. How dare he accuse her father of such a thing! The only people her father would ever consider murdering was Hamato Yoshi and the turtles, right?

Raph on the other hand noticed for maybe the first time that something was different about Karai tonight. She wasn't wearing her usual attire and instead she wore black yoga pants and a dark purple athletic shirt.

No armor.

Why would she be out at night without her armor not even forty-eight hours after a member of the Hamato clan had been killed with evidence of Shredder all over it?

"Her guts were lying everywhere all torn apart, her stomach had been completely slashed through! She was shredded to death" He explained just a hair more calmly as he began to consider that Karai may not have known, but of course he doubted that.

Karai on the other hand grew angry. Her father had done some questionable and most likely illegal things in the past and she knew that he could be ruthless, she even knew that the way he sometimes treated her boarded on abuse. But he would never EVER murder an innocent, especially not in such a barbaric manner.

Without thinking she lunged furiously at Raph who jumped out of the way and grabbed the wrist of her free hand as he did. Once again he forced her to the ground this time by sitting on her back and grabbing her other wrist once she was pinned, immobilizing her weapon.

"Then who did?" He questioned her full of anger, he knew that Shredder killed the girl and it only fueled his rage more when Karai had the gall to lie about it.

"I don't know! Whoever you're talking about it wasn't the Foot clan who killed her!" Karai practically shouted trying to get out from under Raph, normally she would be able to but tonight she could tell he was doing his worst.

"What makes you so sure?!" Raph demanded expecting her to just keep lying but that's not exactly the answer he got.

She stopped struggling for a moment

"Because thanks to that rat you call a master my father is the only family I have left. If someone died and their body looked the way you described it the police will defiantly look into a man nicknamed the shredder. He wouldn't leave a body like that because he would get caught and I would be taken away from him" she answered and for the first time since meeting her Raph understood why Leo is so convinced that she has a good side.

For just an instant he saw that the girl he sat on top of in order to keep her pinned tightly into the ground may not be the cold hearted witch he thought she was. Shredder is a ruthless man and this couldn't be the first time he had been behind something as terrible as a murder, and yes Raph still believed that he was behind this. But for just a second he realized that if anything were ever to happen to Splinter at least he would still have his brothers. But if anything ever happened to Shredder Karai was alone. She would probably be thrown into New York City's foster system and given her age and probably her personality he knew that she most likely would not be adopted. For that one split second Raph saw that there was more to her than he knew, there was a part off her which was nothing more than a little girl who lived in fear of losing everything.

* * *

"That guy was creepy" Castle claimed for maybe the third time since he and Beckett left the precinct to go home to his apartment.

"Maybe but I can't arrest him for being creepy" Beckett said as they entered and Castle closed the door behind them before making his way to the kitchen to see what was in the fridge.

"So you think he was telling the truth, about how Jasmine could've been running from Hamato Yoshi?" He asked closing the refrigerator and instead selecting a bottle of wine as his fiancée took a seat on one of the stools.

"I don't know but if she was then that means Yoshi's back and probably in New York" Beckett mused frustrated as Castle handed her a glass of wine, something was not adding up here but the question still remained on what it was.

"Maybe she wasn't looking for protection, maybe she was looking for Yoshi" Castle suggested before each of them took a sip of their wine

"Well while we were questioning him Ryan and Esposito went over to the college to check out her dorm room maybe she left something behind" Beckett reminded him

"Yeah and hey at least now we might be able to find her mother" Castle said and Beckett nodded, the name of this so called cousin of Oroku Saki's was the same as Jasmine's mother, most likely they were one in the same.

* * *

Karai got back to the church after Shredder, much to her relief.

But she only knew this because the van was back where they kept it parked; she did not dare go up to the throne room and ask him what happened. Instead she made her way up the stairs to the third floor of the building, a floor which had once contained many empty rooms but now each belonged to one of Shredder's henchmen. Inside her room was nothing special in fact it was mostly bare. A twin sized bed had been shoved into the corner with small a plastic storage bin sitting next to it as a make do night stand. On the nightstand were only her make-up and a book she had been reading. A plug in heater stood propped up against the wall next to the door, it was cold in the room during the day so at night the cold was almost unbearable. Hung on the wall was a circular mirror she had bought once she realized that they may be in New York for a while and also against the wall was a laundry basket containing her street clothes and two sweatshirts. Karai hated to admit it but she was actually a fairly messy person, her 'mission clothes' as she called the outfit lay on floor where she had dropped them the night before along with her pajama's. Her armor was in the far corner of her room and stacked into a fairly neat pile, she had learned the hard way that if she left that just lying on the floor she would end up stepping on it and getting hurt. She rummaged through the laundry basket and groaned upon discovering that just as she had expected she should've done her laundry yesterday or at least this morning but she hadn't and now she had nothing clean to wear to bed.

"Oh well" she muttered before changing into the dirty pajama's she had worn for the past two nights and not bothering to pick up her yoga pants and athletic shirt off the floor, she'd grab them tomorrow when she did laundry.

Putting on one of the sweatshirts in order to keep herself warm she climbed into bed still shivering despite the almost useless heater but soon adjusted to the warmth of the blankets. Sticking her hand into the small crack between her bed and the wall she searched for the one thing Shredder would probably toss out if he knew that she still had it. Finally her finger's found what they were looking for and fished out the gray plush elephant she had gotten from a friend of her father one Christmas when she was young. She hugged the old toy tightly against her as if trying to tell it that something was wrong

"Father didn't hurt anyone" she muttered wishing that her old toy could offer some reassurance.

* * *

First thing in the morning at the precinct Esposito and Ryan placed a cardboard box filled with junk on Beckett's desk.

"We didn't find anything unusual or connected to the fire in Jasmine's room however Ginger gave us this box that Jasmine kept under her bed she said Jasmine was going through it the day she died but she doesn't know if she took anything out of it" Esposito explained as Beckett peered into the box and Castle began rummaging through it.

"She's got a lot of comic books in here" he said amused but deeper down towards the bottom of the box was a black leather chained necklace with a wooden charm.

"Guys look at this" he said picking it up to show the others

"that's the same symbol she had drawn on the inside of her folder" Beckett said now thinking that maybe there really was meaning behind the symbol and Ryan rushed off to see if Tori had had any luck finding the symbol online yet.

"Ginger also gave us the number of an Elliot Baxter, said that aside from her he was Jasmine's best friend and apparently they worked together on a lot of projects for school, he's coming in now maybe he can shed some light on what Jasmine was after" Esposito told the other two, this girl seemed to be nothing but a puzzle who's pieces didn't fit together.

But that was when Ryan came back

"We've got something"


	5. Chapter 5

The four detectives quickly made their way into the room where Tori kept all of her tech stuff set up and today on the projection screen was the symbol which looked sort of like a flower but at the same time almost like weapon.

"So it took a while to find but this is the symbol of a ninja clan, the Hamato clan" Tori explained

"Hang on I thought you guys were convinced that ninja's aren't real" Castle commented but now was not the time.

"So if Jasmine was part of this Hamato clan than that would mean she was related to the fire victims" Esposito said

"Which would mean Saki lied to us" Beckett added

"Or… Maybe he told us exactly what we needed to know" Castle chimed in causing the others to glare at him.

"Just hear me out. Aika and Jasmine lived their entire lives off the grid; there is no record of either of them anywhere until Jasmine was eighteen that she has a few school records. I'm willing to bet that Suzuki is not their real name" Castle began only to be interrupted by Esposito

"You think it's Hamato" he said

"Exactly" Castle responded

"So that would mean that Aika is Yoshi's cousin not Saki's" Beckett said starting to understand

"Meaning that if what Saki said was just half true then Jasmine most likely came to New York looking for Yoshi to protect her from him" Castle finished

"But what about the bizarre DNA that Lanie found on Jasmine's body?" Ryan asked hating to bring it up but he needed to, this still made almost no sense.

Just then there was a knock at the open door

"Detective Beckett, Elliot Baxter is here" one of the other homicide detectives informed the group.

* * *

"When Ginger told me what happened I couldn't believe it" Elliot said as he sat down in the lounge like room just as Ginger had with Beckett and Castle trying to figure out what happened.

"Elliot Ginger informed us that you worked with Jasmine on a lot of assignments and as a criminal justice major I understand that you look at a lot of unsolved cases?" Beckett asked and Elliot nodded

"That's right" he assured her wondering what any of their projects had to do with Jasmine's death. He knew Jasmine had wanted to help people so his worst fear was that she had investigated too far into something and gotten killed because of it.

"Elliot did Jasmine ever show you a case about a fire?" Beckett asked hoping that maybe Jasmine had told someone about the fire, just disguised it as a random news story.

But Elliot shook his head confused

"Not that I can remember. But Professor Ingrid lets us choose our own cases as well as our partners, Jasmine and I we always pair up and usually I let her pick the case. She almost always chose something about a missing kid" Elliot admitted with a small grin forming on his face, he wouldn't admit it but he had loved that about her.

"Missing children?" Castle questioned

"Missing, dead it didn't matter. She would go for anything involving a kid; I guess she had a soft spot for them. But most of the time she would avoid the ones where a child's body was found, she liked the kidnapping cases" he clarified.

"Did she ever say why?" Castle asked thinking that maybe, just maybe, this would lead them somewhere.

"I asked her once, she said that she figured most people probably think those missing kids are dead when they could be alive. She was a hopeful person" Elliot answered with a reminiscing grin.

* * *

Beckett stared at the murder board trying to connect it. On it were the pictures of Jasmine, Hamato Yoshi, Oroku Saki, Tang Shen and baby Miwa along with the many things written in dry erase marker but none of it was adding up.

"I think we caught a break" Esposito said as he and Ryan entered the room

"You know how Ginger said that Jasmine's dad died in the military?" The Hispanic detective asked

"Yeah" Castle answered as Ryan put the picture of a middle aged Japanese man up on the board

"Well we did some digging and found that his name was Hamato Takumi and right before he joined the army he got married to none other than Suzuki Aika" Esposito explained as Ryan tacked the picture of a young Japanese woman to the board.

"Jasmine's mother?" Beckett questioned

"Yep apparently after her husband died she went back to her maiden name" Esposito explained

"But that still doesn't explain why we can't find her, especially if we've been looking for the right name" Castle said

"I think I might be able to help with that" Ryan butted in

"I got in contact with the teacher in Japan who wrote Jasmine's letter of recommendation for college. She said she had no idea that the transcripts were fake but it might have been because until her senior year Jasmine said she was home schooled. She said that something she didn't want to talk about happened in her family a long time ago and her mom wanted to keep her away from it" He explained

"And I've been going through Oroku Saki's finances, nothing popped out except for a withdrawal from a bank account for two-thousand dollars cash" Esposito told them

"What was he doing with that much money?" Castle asked but he knew that they were still yet to find out and Esposito's shrug only confirmed that for him.

"Don't know but one last thing. He was apparently in the military with Jasmine's father and they had a nickname for him; The Shredder"

* * *

Sitting on his 'throne' as everyone had come to call it Shredder debated over a few options. The police suspected him but he had gotten away again, albeit just barely. He considered leaving the city but soon abandoned the idea; it would raise suspicions not only from the police but from Karai as well. If they were to temporarily return to Japan just a day after he was brought down to the police station she would know something wasn't right, besides he hadn't killed Jasmine.

Yes she was murdered on his orders but he had no choice. She was part of the Hamato clan and worse she was getting too close to the truth, the truth which could not be told.

* * *

It was late and most of the employees of the NYPD had already gone home so Beckett was getting ready to do the same but Castle on the other hand sat still in his chair, staring at the murder board.

"Maybe it's not him" Beckett finally said causing Castle to turn in his seat and look at her

"Saki, maybe he didn't kill her or start that fire" Beckett said trying to get a new approach but she had to admit that she didn't really believe her words, she knew that man was guilty of at least one of the two crimes.

"Maybe but it's not that I'm trying to figure out" Castle admitted as Beckett took another look at the board

"Lanie sent the evidence back to the lab to be reanalyzed hopefully it comes back more clear" she said but that still wasn't what Castle was concerned with.

"No I'm just wondering, Elliot said that Jasmine was drawn to cases about missing children. Why?" He questioned but Beckett shrugged

"He said that she had a soft spot for them I can understand her wanting to find a missing kid if she could" she answered

"Yeah" Castle said still thinking as the picture of little Miwa caught his eye, the poor baby who died in that fire.

"Most people think they're dead when they could be alive" he whispered causing Beckett to look up, the wheels already turning in Castle's head as he sprung up.

"What?" She asked

"Elliot said that Jasmine held out hope that those missing children she read about where alive and Ginger said that when Jasmine brought up something about the fire to her mother she called it desperate hope" he began as Beckett tried to fallow.

"That means she must have had some type of hope, hope that maybe someone was alive" he theorized as Beckett realized what he was getting at when he pointed to the picture of Miwa

"You think Jasmine thought Miwa was alive?" She asked

"The comic books" he whispered

"What?" Beckett asked now a little more confused

"That box under Jasmine's bed contained multiple comic books and when it comes to comics there is rule, a rule that says unless you see the body or the body can regenerate then the character is not dead" he explained as Beckett began searching her desk for the translated version of the article.

"Castle, Miwa's body wasn't found" she exclaimed in surprise that maybe this could be what it was all about.

"If Saki stole Miwa that night and Jasmine found out about it I think that's motive to kill" Castle said as Beckett's eye widened.

"The girl, when I called Saki a girl answered the phone" she said

"Do you think it was Miwa?" Castle asked as Beckett grabbed her coat

"Only one way to find out"


	6. Chapter 6

It was almost nine o'clock by the time Castle and Beckett got to the church which Saki was reportedly renting.

"Oroku Saki" Beckett called as she began knocking loudly on the large front doors

"I've heard of a lot of ironic situations but a possible murderer slash kidnapper living in a church, that's a new one" Castle said as Beckett continued to knock until finally the door opened.

"Can I help you?" Asked the person who answered the door, to be more specific it was the teenaged girl who had answered the door.

Castle studied her appearance for a second, she looked to be about the right age to be Miwa and she was clearly of Asian descent, most likely Japanese.

"That depends we're looking for Oroku Saki do you know him by any chance?" Castle asked her taking note of how her confused face twisted to show just a little bit of fear.

"He's my father but he's not here right now" she answered and Castle nodded

"How old are you exactly?" He asked and once again the girl in front of him looked confused

"Sixteen" she finally answered

Karai had no idea what was going on, all she knew was she answered the door and after asking her for her age she was being brought down to the police station. Sitting in the back of the car she couldn't help but be nervous and want to cry because she had no idea what was going on. And after her encounter with Raph she couldn't help but fear that she was being taken from her father.

"Can you please tell me what's going on?" She practically begged the detective and her partner who sat there quietly in the front of the car.

"Karai what was your mother's name?" The man who said his name was Mr. Castle asked her instead of giving an answer.

She just looked at him in confusion for a moment, could this really all be about some random girl who was murdered? What did it have to do with her or her deceased mother?

"Tang Shen" she finally answered but neither of the adults said anything so she just sighed and leaned her head against the window.

Castle glanced back at Karai who sat there staring out the window as if the answers to all her questions were on the outside. He felt bad, a part of him wanted to tell her what was going on but they had decided that it was in her best interest not to. If she did turn out to be Saki's biological daughter then they would have put an insane amount of fear in her without reason, its best that her fears be based on the unknown instead of the increasingly possible.

* * *

Meanwhile the turtles had just begun their patrol and had returned to the docks, not at all surprised to find the body gone.

"Do you think Shredder took it away or the police?" Leo questioned Donnie who was going over the space where the dead girl had fallen, looking for anything that the disposer of evidence may have left behind.

"Well obviously she wasn't moved right away and there's almost no trace, my guess would be the police" Donnie answered and Raph of course knew that he was right.

Ever since the previous night he had been thinking about Karai, not entirely the same way in which Leo did but at the same time not entirely in a different way. It was like ever since she told him why Shredder couldn't have done it he had realized what an idiot he had been. He hated Karai since the moment they met but now it was as if he saw just how much like him she is, and it terrified him.

Karai is willing to use any advantage she can get, even if she doesn't always need it. She didn't care about consequences, only about victory. She seemed to have no soul and Raph knew that sometimes he could seem the same way and if he had grown up the way she did, he shuttered at the thought.

* * *

"Kate you know I'm not good with living patients" Lanie claimed when Castle and Beckett brought Karai down to the morgue to see her.

Karai was more confused than ever by this point. She had been in a police station a few times back in Tokyo, once when she spent a night in a holding cell after getting busted for vandalism and a couple of times when she was a kid and had to go with Steranko to bail out her father or the other way around. But she had never been brought down to the morgue.

"Look Lanie I just need you to take a blood sample from her, Ryan and Esposito are bringing Saki in now and I've got to go" Beckett instructed so Lanie reluctantly agreed but while Karai listened to the conversation between the two women something caught her eye.

It was the body of a young woman lying pale and lifeless on the examination table and the sheet which covered her had a hole cut into the stomach, exposing where she had been slashed.

Looking at her Karai thought she might be sick, she didn't have a weak stomach or a problem with dead bodies but looking at the girl, knowing that it was possible that her own father could have been involved in doing that to her, it scared the hell out of her.

Once Castle and Beckett left Lanie turned to the frightened girl they had left her with, she didn't know if she should hope that blood test would if show she is Miwa or she isn't.

"Did Beckett tell you what this is for?" She asked the girl as she prepared her needle

"No" Karai answered solemnly with a headshake as Lanie turned around.

"Well I'm sorry to ask you to do this without knowing why but I promise that it's for the best" she said and briefly Karai considered refusing to take a blood test until she knew why. She considered demanding answers but instead she just nodded and let the medical examiner stick the needle into her arm and draw her blood. Something was telling her that if she got answers and then turned out not to need them it would be almost impossible to pretend that this had never happened.

Lanie smiled handing the girl a bad-aid once she was done

"Sorry I don't have a place for you to sit in here" she said trying to strike up some kind of conversation to make this less awkward.

"Its fine" Karai muttered staring at the body which without question was the same one Raph had been screaming about.

Lanie took notice of Karai's apparent interest in the body

"Did you know her?" She asked wondering if maybe Karai had ever seen Jasmine before but the girl shook her head

"No, what was her name?" She asked wondering if maybe the name would sound familiar

"Her name is Jasmine. She was clawed to death by something but we don't know what, the only evidence came back as half dog half human" Lanie explained telling Karai what she could.

Karai felt herself growing pale, Bradford. Bradford and Xever had been out on a mission two nights ago, most likely the night Jasmine died but if they had killed her then it was under Shredder's orders.

"Karai?" Lanie asked concerned when the teenager in her office backed up unsteadily and leaned heavily on a table for support

"Karai are you ok?" She asked getting a little closer unaware of how desperately the girl was fighting to keep herself from fainting.

He had done it, maybe not directly but her father was the reason that this girl is dead. As Karai's body began to realize that her mind was not going to give in to the reaction of fainting she found herself doubled over with one hand instinctively clutching her stomach and the other over her mouth as if to hold back anything trying to come up.

Lanie panicked for a minute as the girl suddenly vomited. She scanned the room looking for anything to give the sick teen to throw up in and finally grabbed her small waste basket, although by the time she did Karai was just standing hunched over staring at her half-digested supper sitting in a pile on the floor.

"Here take this in case you throw up again" Lanie instructed handing her the wastebasket

"Sorry" Karai apologized anxiously, she's never been one to apologize but considering the mess she just made the medical examiner definitely deserved the apology.

"It's ok honey, come on" Lanie said leading her out of the morgue.

* * *

"What is this about?" Shredder asked when he had been brought back into the interrogation room of the precinct.

"Mr. Oroku you said that Aika was most likely your cousin is that correct?" Beckett questioned getting straight to the point.

"Yes" The Shredder answered

"So then it's a coincidence that Hamato Yoshi has a cousin the same age and with the same name?" Castle asked and he and Beckett both saw it when Oroku Saki's confidence began to fade.

"Oroku Saki you were a prime suspect in the case of the fire at the Hamato family's home sixteen years ago-" Beckett began only to be cut off by the man sitting before her.

"I already told you that I had nothing to do with that fire" Shredder said angrily

"And we believed you, until we realized that the girl who answered our call was your daughter" Castle said and Shredder's blood ran cold, he knew that his worst fears were only mere seconds away from becoming a reality.

"Oroku Saki your daughter is sixteen years old, the same age as the baby who supposedly died in that fire would be today. She told us that her mother was Tang Shen and one of Jasmine's friends told us that Jasmine was drawn to kidnapping cases and I'm willing to bet that the reason she's dead is because she got too close to one" Beckett began growing angrier by the minute. This was one of those times when she knew that the man before her was guilty and considering what he had done, not just murdered two women but also kidnapped an innocent baby; she just wanted him behind bars now.

"You have no proof" was Saki's defense

"We will. Your daughter's downstairs taking a blood test as we speak" Castle replied smugly

"Mr. Oroku you know how that test is going to turn out so if you have something to confess then I suggest you say it" Beckett told him sternly but of course all he did was ask for his lawyer.

* * *

Karai was lying down on the couch in the small lounge room of the precinct, as the only place Lanie had downstairs for somebody to lay down was a currently occupied examination table. Karai stared up at the ceiling trying to keep her mind off what she had discovered by focusing on the bitter taste of the stomach acid she hadn't been able to wash away from her mouth even after drinking half a bottle of water. She stared up at the ceiling anxiously waiting for someone to come and tell her why they had taken her blood and or when she was being sent into a foster home. That was when there was a small knock on the open door where she found detective Beckett standing in the doorway.

"Lanie tells me you got sick" she said entering the room and closing the door behind her.

Shakily Karai sat up; to be honest she didn't feel any better

"A little, I think it was just seeing a dead body. It freaked me out a little" she lied knowing the reason she had gotten sick was not just seeing the body.

Beckett nodded wishing that she didn't have to tell Karai what they had found

"Karai are you familiar with a man named Hamato Yoshi?" she asked seeing Karai's face suddenly become angry she sighed.

"Now I don't know what your father told you but I doubt that it was the truth" Beckett continued as she handed Karai the English version of the article, the teenager took it and read it through.

"That's not possible" she finally said, this had to be some kind of joke. Tang Shen, her mother, she was never married to Splinter much less had a child with him.

"Actually it's not. That fire was sixteen years ago when you were only a baby, the body of the baby who died that night was never found. We compared the results of your blood test with those of tests taken from both Yoshi and Saki at the time of the fire" Beckett began to explain but she paused for a minute. Karai looked at her with pleading eyes, begging her not to say what she was about to.

"Karai you were kidnapped as a baby, your real father is Hamato Yoshi" Beckett confessed to the girl.


	7. Chapter 7

Karai couldn't believe it.

All these years, her entire life had been nothing but one big lie.

She stared blankly at the detective sitting across from her as if wishing she would say that it's a joke. That this is some sick joke but slowly it sank in that this awful thing she was being told was in fact the truth.

"Karai your father disappeared after your mother died but we have reason to believe that he's here in New York and I promise you that we will find him" Beckett assured trying to piece together any of the broken shards of Karai's life, trying to give her hope.

But Karai knew that statement was a lie, they would never find Splinter. However maybe she could

"Don't bother, I know where he is" she said half lying, she doesn't know where Splinter is exactly but she does know how to find him.

"You do?" Beckett asked a little surprised and Karai only nodded, hoping that maybe they would just let her go.

"Ok well um then just tell me and I'll call him to come get you or I'll bring you home" Beckett said, well there went Karai's plan but she quickly thought of a backup.

"If you don't mind do you think I could call him?" She asked and Beckett considered it before nodding

"Go ahead" she answered much to Karai's relief.

* * *

"April phone" April heard her aunt call to her from down the hall so not thinking anything of it she went and took the phone from her aunt.

"Hello" she said into the phone but on the other end she couldn't believe what she heard.

"April?" A voice asked, a voice April recognized by the chill it sent shivering down her spine, Karai's voice.

"What do you want Karai?" She spat defensively into the phone, little did she know that the heart of the girl on the other end sank when she heard how angry the red head sounded.

On the other end of the phone Karai was losing it. She leaned against the wall in the precinct's break room trying to figure out what she was supposed to say to convince April, to convince anyone.

"It's a really long story but I'm at the police station-" she began only to be cut off by April

"What did you finally get arrested and are using your one phone call to gloat about something?" April asked knowing very well that couldn't be the reason for this call but somehow the fact that Karai was calling from the police station both did and didn't surprise her.

Meanwhile on the other end of the phone hot tears were beginning to run down Karai's cheeks as she tried not to sniffle or let a sound of emotion escape her mouth, she didn't want April to hear her crying.

"No listen. I just found out that something happened sixteen years ago, during the fire that Shredder started. He kidnapped me, he stole me from my family and I'm, I'm truly sorry for everything I've done. I didn't know the truth; Shredder lied to me saying that he was my father. Please let me make it up to you guys" she practically begged as she lost control over her tears.

April was shocked to hear Karai's voice cracking on the other end and even more shocked to hear why. Could she be lying? April didn't think that even Karai would stoop so low as to pretend she was Splinter's lost daughter.

"What exactly do you want me to do?" April asked still wondering why Karai had called her of all people, not to mention how she even got her number to begin with.

Karai took a breath desperate to calm herself

"They won't let me go unless somebody comes to get me. Just tell them that Splinter's sick and had to send you" Karai suggested but she didn't hear a reply from April

"I understand if you don't trust me but-" Karai began but she was cut off

"No just, this is a lot to process. Just I need to talk to Splinter the turtles, this is their call" April said still a little wary but she did believe Karai, she really sounded sincere.

"Ok, thank you" Karai said and that surprised April almost just as much as the story she had just heard

"Don't thank me yet" was all she said before hanging up.

* * *

Castle looked into the break room watching Karai hang up the phone. He watched as her red face let out a sob and she leaned back against the wall before sliding down to the floor crying, that was when Beckett walked over.

"Did she get ahold of her dad?" She asked

"I don't know" Castle said watching the broken teenager sit with her legs to her chest as she cried

"Can you imagine that? Growing up with an abusive father only to one day discover that you aren't even his child?" Castle asked looking to Beckett who wouldn't meet his gaze, they both felt bad for Karai and by the looks of things she wasn't handling this very well. All they could do now was hope that she had spoken to her father and soon she would be home where she belongs.

* * *

April hurried to the lair still wondering if maybe this was all a trap but she had to tell the others. As far as she was concerned they had to know what Karai had said but if it did turn out to be a trap, Splinter would be crushed.

Upon entering the lair she saw no one but she heard voices coming from the dojo, they were training. She didn't like to interrupt training but this was important so she quickly made her way to the dojo only to find spars between both Mikey and Donnie and another one between Raph and Leo come to a stop when she ran in.

"Guys you are never going to believe what just happened" she said unsure of how to start this as all four turtles plus Splinter waited for her to tell them.

"I just got a call, from Karai-" she began only to be cut off by Raph

"What does she want?" He asked bitterly, thinking that if Karai had gone through the trouble to find April's number then it couldn't be good.

April looked Raph in the eye, suddenly filled with anger after hearing the sound of his voice. His voice was so filled with hatred that it just made her mad because she knew that things weren't the way he thought and that he probably wouldn't be open to seeing them in a new way.

"To come home" she told him sternly, all four turtles look at her like she had a second head. Splinter however just stared at her in surprise but not confusion, he knew what she meant.

"She called me saying that she's sorry. That she was kidnapped and that Shredder lied to her, she mentioned that it happened during the fire. I think she was trying to tell me that she's Miwa" April confessed.

Her friends looked at her with wide eyes and open mouths while Splinter only looked to the ground, yes he was happy to hear that his daughter knew of her true identity and wished to rejoin her family but what worried him was how she found out.

"She has to be lying" Raph finally said

"No she isn't" Splinter said in a voice just above a whisper. His sons as well as April looked at him in surprise

"Sensei?" Leo finally asked, wondering why Splinter who is normally so cautious would believe such a thing so quickly.

"During my last encounter with the Shredder in order to gain an advantage he told me what he had truly done to Miwa. He stole her away from me and raised her as Karai" Splinter confessed.

The expressions on the faces of his children changed from those of confusion to those of broken hearts and damaged souls.

Everything was quiet for a minute as everybody tried to take in what had happened and considered what could happen next

"She called me from the police station. They won't let her go unless somebody goes to get her. I can go if you want" April offered finally breaking the everlasting silence knowing that Splinter couldn't go himself

"Ok even if we were to let Karai come back here what makes you so sure that the police will let her go with you?" Raph questioned April who didn't have an answer prepared but Splinter did. He left the dojo for a moment in order to get what he needed

"We'll figure something out Raph but Karai is coming home" Mikey spoke up, his voice unusually serious

"Even if she is Splinter's daughter she was still raised by Shredder, she is always going to be on his side" Raph spat remembering his run in with Karai the previous night, no matter the truth Shredder was all the family she had and she would always defend him.

"You weren't the one on the phone with her Raph. I could hear her crying, she said that she wants to try and make up for everything she's done. She even said that she understands if we don't trust her, she's scared Raph" April said, the conversation quickly shifting from a group discussion to between just April and Raph.

"Considering she called from the police station I'm willing to bet that Shredder's been arrested. He's behind bars , she's just discovered what really happened to her mother and now the only people she thinks might be able to help her are people who she has done nothing but hurt, give her a break!" April continued, nearly shouting by the end. She really didn't know why she was being so defensive about this, after all Karai had attacked her once before but she just couldn't let her anger over that get in the way of the truth. Karai had lost everything she ever knew and now she was probably afraid that she'd be left on her own.

It was quiet again and Splinter soon returned with a piece of paper in hand, a note he had written in case the police were hesitant to let Karai go with April.

"Bring Miwa home" he instructed handing April the note which she accepted with a smile

"Don't worry Sensei, I will" she assured him.

* * *

Karai was back to sitting on the couch, waiting.

She was waiting for a person who she wasn't sure would come and she couldn't blame her if she didn't. To be honest she didn't really expect to be brought to her father and given the chance to join her true family but she hoped that April would at least come and get her, that way even if she was left alone on the streets she could find Leo during one of his patrols and try and talk to him, he was the only one she thought might be willing to listen.

At least since she knew what killed Jasmine she had been able to tell detective Beckett that Shredder knew a scientist who might be able to create such evidence and now the cops were probably halfway to Stockman's lab. She couldn't have told them the truth; it would put her true family at too much of a risk.

* * *

April walked nervously into the police station, praying that this wasn't a trick. She walked up to the front desk where a woman typing on a computer was busy but she stopped her work to look at the red headed teenager before her

"Can I help you?" She asked with a friendly smile which April struggled to return and miraculously managed to do so

"Hi um I'm here to see detective Beckett" April said and so the woman told her where to go.

After thanking the woman April made her way to the elevator and once its big metal doors closed she let her nerves return. So far so good but her stomach was still in knots, if this turned out to be a trick she was going to hunt Karai down and make her pay for giving the guys and especially Splinter this kind of false hope.

"No it's real, not even Karai would fake this" April muttered to herself and that was when the elevator doors opened.

April slowly walked off the elevator and looked around the precinct for someone who might be able to help her. She hadn't wandered very far through the busy area before she saw windows which did not give a view of the outside but of another room. Inside the room were two old looking couches and a few other pieces of furniture but what April took particular notice of was the girl sitting on one of the couches, Karai.

She didn't see the red head studying her as she sat there looking down at her feet. She wasn't wearing her normal clothes but instead she was wearing what she had been that day at Murakami's minus the jacket, instead she wore a short sleeved maroon colored, V-neck shirt. Most of her make-up appeared to be missing but April wouldn't ask her about that because she knew that Karai had been beginning to cry on the phone so most likely her make-up had become smudged and runny so she had probably just taken off what was left. Just then Karai looked up, surprised to see that April had actually come.

Both girls held their breath, each surprised to actually see the other like up until this moment of eye contact each believed that the other was lying. Karai was the first to let go of her breath as a small and barely noticeable smile dared to begin forming at the corners of her mouth. April simply nodded, signaling Karai that she still needed to talk to somebody but in just a few moments she would be on her way home.


	8. Chapter 8

To say that the walk back to the lair was awkward would be an understatement. Both April and Karai just walked in silence staring at the sidewalk. Neither of them really knew what to say because to be honest, neither one of them thought that they would actually get this far. April had thought that even with the note from Splinter (which much to her surprise she didn't end up needing) the police would be a little hesitant to let one teenaged girl leave with another but she was wrong. Karai on the other hand hadn't even expected April or anyone for that matter to come in the first place, she had been expecting to be sent into some kind of foster home where she knew she would just run away in an attempt to find Leo and talk to him. Karai was so lost in her thoughts, regretting the total lack of faith she had had in April and her family, that she didn't even notice when they took a turn into an alleyway.

"Here we are" April said when they stopped and Karai noticed that she was removing a manhole cover from its place and starting down into the sewer.

Karai was hesitant and her stomach was in knots at the realization that she was really doing this. She was really going to the lair where she would no doubt have to face the turtles. Leo would understand but she couldn't be too sure about the others and then there was her father. As Karai fallowed April down and slid the manhole cover back into place she remembered the last time she had seen Splinter and upon remembering that she purposely banged her head against one of the metal steps. Of course she had called him a coward when he refused to fight her; of course she had to have saved Shredder that night. She couldn't have just stayed out of that room until Splinter was long gone. At least now she knew why Splinter had run away instead of fighting her. But after that she wondered if he could forgive her.

"Are you ok?" April asked as the two girls walked silently through the tunnels of the sewers

"Can you blame me if I'm not?" Karai answered not looking up from the ground and April looked away, unsure of what to say.

"Do they…do they even want me there?" Karai asked finally looking the red head in the eye

April was caught off guard by the question; she hadn't even considered that Karai would worry about her family not taking her back.

"Yes, of course they do" April answered but she saw the worry and doubt in Karai's eyes

"Karai I know you've been through a lot in the past few hours but they do want you home" April continued trying to reassure her possibly new friend but so far she wasn't succeeding, then she thought of something.

"I lost my mom when I was six, I don't know what happened to her I just know that we were at our family's house in Northampton and one night I went to sleep in my bed and when I woke up I was in the backseat of the car. My dad was driving and my mom… she was gone" April confessed, she could feel the tears starting to form in her eyes. The memory of that night, or rather the lack of memory, she hated to think about it.

Karai looked at April sympathetically but couldn't quite understand why April was telling her this but before she could ask she got her answer.

"I may not know what happened to my mom but I do know that I would do anything to have her back even though it's been so many years, the guys feel the same way about you" April said and it did reassure Karai a little bit but only because she knew that she would give anything to have her own mother back with her and could understand the feeling.

It was silent for another minute before April spoke again

"How did you find out anyway?" She asked still unaware of the circumstances of everything

"Shredder, he had a girl killed. The police were investigating and I guess she had the newspaper article on the fire" Karai answered and silently April gasped

"The guys found that girl's body; she was a part of the Hamato clan." April told Karai who couldn't help but sarcastically laugh

"Great so now I've lost two people to Shredder" she remarked but April just gave a small smile, trying to find a bright side.

"Maybe she was looking for you" April suggested unaware that her 'false hope' was exactly the case.

* * *

Baxter Stockman was brought in and when Beckett walked into the interrogation room the poor man was shaking like a leaf.

"What do you want, what's going on?" The man rambled as Beckett put down her folder on the table and out of it she took the DNA sample from the supposedly mutant dog.

"What is this?" She demanded tossing it to the scientist. He picked up the bag containing the sliver and studied it

"I'm not sure" he answered suddenly confused but the detective only rolled her eyes

"Yes you do" she practically muttered

"I don't!" Baxter exclaimed looking her in the eye, he really had no clue.

Beckett sighed and took a seat cross from the fidgety man

"Listen to me, a girl is dead and this was found in her wounds. The analysis says that the DNA contained in it is half man and half dog and I know that you're capable of creating something like that" Beckett explained but stopped to watch his reaction, he was afraid.

Stockman was indeed afraid, afraid of what was about to happen. He couldn't sell out Bradford because if he did then that would lead the police to the Kraang who he actually feared more than Shredder.

"Listen I didn't kill anyone I swear-" Stockman began but he was cut off

"Then who did?" Beckett asked of course she was already assuming that it was Saki but she needed proof, some kind of proof.

Baxter began to stutter, what was he supposed to say?

"Baxter I know you're friends with Oroku Saki, did you create the evidence for him?" Beckett questioned being careful not to tell the scientist that his friend was already in a holding cell.

Baxter twitched at the mention of Shredder, he wanted to lie but the truth, or something close to it anyway, just came pouring out

"No I didn't create that, it's real. There's a man or he was a man, he works for Shredder and one night some experimental chemicals fell on him and mutated him into a creature that's part man, part dog. He went out a few nights ago, he killed the girl" Stockman confessed, Beckett left the interrogation room.

"I told you it was a mutant" Castle gloated as he and Beckett looked through the glass at the man inside the interrogation room

"No he created that claw or whatever it is" Beckett argued

"Beckett look at the guy, he's practically crying!" Castle exclaimed gesturing towards the glass which peered in on a very pathetic Baxter Stockman about to break down in tears.

"Look he isn't going to lie; he's so worried that he's not physically capable of it. He's telling the truth" Castle continued and although she wouldn't admit it Beckett knew that he was right.

Stockman was not a man to last in a police interrogation, he was one of those who squealed after a few short minutes and he had, she just couldn't believe what he said, it isn't possible.

* * *

The girls finally reached the lair but when they did Karai froze in the doorway. All four turtles were down in the sunken pit and Leo was the first to notice the two standing in the entrance. He turned to look at the two girls and the other three turtles fallowed their leader's example, nobody knew what to do. Using her elbow April tried to nudge Karai who in response only looked at the red head with frightened eyes

"Come on" April whispered kindly as she went through one of the rotating gates, Karai fallowed but didn't move after that.

She only stood there, her mouth open as if she were trying to say something but the words were refusing to come to mind. Her eyes were apologetic and when Leo stood and began walking towards her she felt her heart stop. She held her breath knowing that he was going to either accept her or tell her to get lost. He came to a stop in front of her and looked her in the eye, she stared back waiting for him to say something but he never did. Instead he put a hand on her shoulder and before she could protest pulled her into a hug.

This surprised just about everyone because neither Leo or Karai was ever one for emotional moments but Karai returned the hug as the last of her tears from earlier began to leak from her eyes.

"I'm sorry" She muttered as Leo tightened his grip on her just a bit

"I know" he said before releasing her and pretending not to see the tears beginning to spill onto her face.

"Splinter's in the dojo" he said gesturing for her to fallow him.

* * *

"So you believe Stockman?" Castle questioned smugly as he and Beckett prepared to leave for the night

"No but he had an alibi there was no proof that he created that… whatever it was, that we found in Jasmine so I had to let him go" Beckett defended

"Hm, well either way we know Saki was behind it and we got him" Castle mused and Beckett nodded "Still if it really was a mutant then cases might be getting a lot weirder" Castle continued but Beckett only rolled her eyes

"I doubt it Castle, there are no such things as mutants" she said.

* * *

But little did Beckett know that the girl who had left the police station earlier that day was now living with her family of mutants in the sewer. Her reunion with her father had been a lot like her apology to Leo, she had begun to cry and Splinter had tightened his grip when she did. She apologized to him for calling him a coward and for just about everything else she had ever done and was surprised when he did not blame her but then again she knew that he was right, she was lied to.

Now as it was getting later and everyone was heading off to bed Karai lay on the couch in the living room, finding a more permanent place for her to sleep would commence in the morning. Leo, Donnie and Mikey had all gone to bed so when Karai heard the footsteps of a turtle passing by behind her she knew it was Raph

"Her name was Jasmine" Karai said not sitting up until she heard Raph stop.

"What?" He asked confused, turning back to see his sister adjusting herself to a sitting position

"The girl that Shredder had his men kill, her name was Jasmine" Karai clarified, Raph of course didn't know what to say but Karai knew what finding the name meant to him.

Raph simply nodded before turning to continue on his way to his room as Karai lay back down and although Raph's words were just barely above a whisper Karai heard them loud and clear

"Glad to have you back" he said.


	9. Epilogue

"Alright break it up before i do" Leo said to Raph and Karai in frustration as he walked into the living room to see Raph stumbling around the pit with Karai on his back reaching over his shoulder's trying to grab the remote from his hands.

This had become a pretty regular occurrence in the lair, to the point where Mikey just sat on the floor laughing, Donnie waited somewhere else until somebody won the battle for the remote and Leo was sure that after a few more days he'd just let them work it out themselves.

"Get your hands off of my eyes!" Raph demanded when his vision turned to black

"Give me the remote!" Karai bargained now gripping her brother's face in order to stay on as he tried to shake her off of him.

Leo shook his head in a mixture of frustration and amusement, he was getting pretty tired of this happening every time the five of them decided to watch a movie but at the same time if someone had told him a year ago that Karai would be tackling Raph for a TV remote, he would've asked if they were sure it wasn't a bomb detonation remote. But with both of them clearly ignoring him Leo hopped down into the pit and struggled to get in front of Raph, who despite Karai blinding him, appeared to be winning since Karai now needed both her hands to hold on.

"Enough" Leo said, putting his hands on Raph's shoulders to signal him to stop walking around.

Understanding that she had lost Karai reluctantly climbed off of Raph and went to take her seat on the couch, still irritated that Raph had won.

"Is it safe to come in?" Donnie called from the kitchen where he had gone to make the popcorn ten minutes ago.

"Yup and we're watching The Matrix!" Mikey cheered as Donnie came in and took his seat

"We've seen that movie a hundred times" Karai complained

Raph, who was sitting on the floor next to Mikey turned around to face his sister

"You can pick the movie when you pry the remote from my cold, dead hands" he said to her and she only rolled her eyes.

* * *

Ten o'clock and the movie was about half over. Leo glanced around to see who was still awake, for a few years now ten o'clock had been sort of an unofficial bedtime, as in it was the earliest anyone ever went to bed. So after Karai moved in, since she didn't have a bedroom and they were still working on building one, she had been sleeping on the couch and, in Leo's mind at least, starting at ten the couch was her space and he tried to keep the guys from falling asleep there.

Glancing out of the corner of his eye Leo noted that Karai, who was sitting next to him, was still awake and seemed to be paying close attention to the movie

_So much for being sick of this movie _the leader thought to himself as he turned his head to glance at Donnie sitting at the foot of the couch, he seemed to still be paying attention to the movie.

Down on the floor were Raph and Mikey, Mikey's head was bobbing up and down as he fought to keep himself awake while Raph's soft snoring could be heard over the sound of the movie.

_We let him pick the movie and he's the first one asleep _Leo mused to himself.

After about twenty more minutes Donnie began to nod off and decided to head off to bed and was fallowed by Mikey who was almost completely asleep by that point. As they left Leo glanced at Karai to see if she was still awake, she was but he could tell she was getting tired. She had lay down on her side and curled into a ball so once Donnie was gone Leo took the space at the foot of the couch. Taking the hint Karai stretched out her legs enough to be comfortable but said nothing to Leo.

When the movie came to an end Leo and Karai were the only two still awake and with the remote now in his possession Leo stood up to stretch before tossing it to Karai.

"Ow!" She exclaimed, Leo hadn't realized that she was half asleep and therefor not paying attention. The remote bounced against her head as it landed

"Sorry i thought you were awake" Leo apologized as Karai rubbed her head

"Am now" she said to him annoyed

"Sorry" he said again

"It's fine" Karai said back, taking her hand off her head and rolling over to pull her blanket out from in between the cushions.

"I'm going to bed" Leo said with a yawn

"Ok, goodnight" Karai said to him while she finished spreading the old fleece blanket over herself.

"How are we going to get Raph up?" Leo questioned knowing that Raph had been asleep on the floor for well over an hour and was the heaviest sleeper of them all.

Propping herself up on her elbow Karai looked over the edge of the couch at the sleeping turtle

"Just leave him, he'll wake up eventually" She said laying back down

"You don't mind the snoring?" Leo questioned, he didn't have a problem with leaving Raph on the living room floor but he figured Karai was already stuck on the couch for two weeks now with at least one more to go, he really hated to subject her to a snoring roommate.

But she just gave a shrug "He's not that bad, if he gets too loud I'll wake him up" she said and Leo nodded

"Ok, goodnight" he said stepping over Raph's sleeping body and heading for his room.

"Night" Karai called back before settling into sleep.

* * *

When Raph opened his eyes the living room was pitch black and he was still laying on the floor. Sitting up and turning around he saw Karai laying on the couch with her back turned to him. He pulled out his T-phone to check the time, 1:37 it read.

He sat there in the dark for a few minutes, too awake to fall back asleep but too tired to get up and go to his room.

"Karai? Are you awake?" He whispered after a minute or two

"Hmm hmm" he got in muffled response

"Are you awake or are you just murmuring?" He asked her skeptically.

"No I'm awake" she answered before rolling over to face him

"What's up?" She asked, her eyes open but still heavy with sleep, as if the sound of him sitting up had been what woke her.

Raph hesitated for a moment, his mouth opened but no words came at first.

"What was it like? Growing up with Shredder for a father?" He finally asked.

Karai blinked a few times at his question as if to wake herself up before answering. She sat up and crossed her legs, now fully awake.

"Not what you would expect" she finally answered, staring down into her lap. The room was dark but when she looked up she could still see Raph's face, he was patiently waiting for her to continue.

"Shredder was always obsessed with his vendetta but he really did seem to care about me. Whenever i was sick he would cancel training for the day, postpone it until i was better. He taught me everything i know about ninjitsu and sometimes when i did something stupid attempting to make him happy, he would actually smile" she explained, the idea of Shredder smiling was almost as strange to her as it was to Raph. But she had a few faint memories, such as her five year old self making her so called 'father' a horribly drawn birthday card.

"Shredder smiling?" Raph commented to which Karai gave a small laugh

"About once every couple years" she joked before getting back to what she was saying

"Of course he was never exactly father of the year, i used to be terrified of doing anything he might not approve of because if i got caught…" she trailed off and shuttered

"What?" Raph questioned suddenly concerned, which Karai caught onto

"You wouldn't think that yelling was worse than a physical beating and maybe it wasn't but when it comes from Shredder, it feels worse." She explained as all of the horrible nights came back to her.

"I knew Shredder loved me, but if i disobeyed him he would yell and scream. I would beg for forgiveness and he would call me weak. I remember one night when i was eight, i can't even remember what i did anymore, but he sent me to bed early, crying. I had a clock in my room so i kept watching it, i cried for my mother for six straight hours and Shredder didn't even acknowledge me" she explained.

Raph looked at her in sorrow, he didn't like that she had grown up with such monster for a father but what he really hated, was that she wasn't supposed to. She was Splinter's daughter, she was Miwa. She was supposed to be raised by her parents in Japan and have a normal life. Instead she had been kidnapped and raised by a monster, her mother was dead, her father is a rat and she has four turtles for adopted brothers, not to mention they live in a sewer.

"I'm sorry Karai" Raph finally muttered. Karai only looked at him quizzically, it wasn't like Raph to apologize.

"For what? I told you it wasn't that bad and besides you weren't even born yet, or hatched i guess, it's not your fault" she told him, sort of feeling embarrassed that it had momentarily slipped her mind that her brother's had hatched from eggs.

Raph shrugged

"Maybe not but none of this was supposed to happen, you should've had a normal life" Raph said but much to his surprise, despite the darkness of the room, he saw Karai frown.

"All those times Shredder made me cry, every time he called me weak, every time i failed, i had one thing to hold on to. I had once been told that everything that happens, it happens for a reason. I hate what happened just as much as you do, probably more, but if it hadn't then nobody would be fighting the Kraang. Worse things could've happened" Karai said, Raph looked at her in surprise

"So you forgive Shredder?" He asked in surprise, he couldn't believe that she was so calm about this considering every time someone so much as mentioned Shredder's name she would scowl.

Karai narrowed her eyes and shook her head "I'll never forgive him, but i can at least look for a bright side to what he did" she responded

"That's a pretty dark bright side" Raph muttered still loud enough to be heard and Karai actually giggled

"Hey, for somebody who grew up as a lonely, only child, four brothers his a brighter side than you would think" she said causing Raph to grin.

Brothers.

Karai had been living here for about two weeks now and as far as Raph knew this was the first time she had out loud called the turtles her brothers.

"Your sister basically coming back from the dead isn't so bad either" Raph commented which made Karai smile.

For another minute the two sat there in a happy sort of silence. Raph remembered the nights from his childhood, every once in a while he or one of his brothers would upset themselves by wishing that Tang Shen and Miwa were still here.

Karai lay back down, the memories of lonely days and nights from her own childhood suddenly made better by the knowledge that things were different now, that she wasn't alone.

Raph went back to laying on the floor "sorry i was such a jerk when we first met, and talked Leo into betraying you at the docks" he apologized but Karai only chuckled

"After everything i did i'd say we're even" she said which was really her way of apologizing

"Alright Miwa, we're even" Raph agreed. He had called her by her birth name to see what she would say, so far only Splinter had been calling her Miwa.

But she said nothing, not another word was spoken between the two that night. Karai was the first to drift back into sleep while Raph lay there on the floor, a smile on his face because after all these years, the boys most impossible childhood wish had been granted, their sister had come home.


End file.
